Prime Minister Mark Carney finally delivered a long overdue public statement on the unsettling spike of antisemitic incidents in Canada.

On June 1, in a candid speech at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, he condemned these assaults, acknowledged that the Jewish community faces “a surge of antisemitism to levels not seen in the postwar period,” and announced the formation of a ministerial council “to combat racism and hate in all its forms.”

He made his announcement amid complaints by Jewish organizations that the federal government has not taken sufficiently strong measures to protect Jewish Canadians. Jews, comprising one percent of Canada’s population, are the victims of more than two-thirds of all religiously motivated hate crimes in this country.

Last year, B’nai Brith Canada recorded about 6,800 antisemitic incidents, the highest number in almost 50 years.

Antisemitism has risen dramatically in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia since Hamas’ one-day invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023. This atrocity triggered the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and led to the current war in Lebanon pitting Israel against Hezbollah, Iran’s principal proxy in the Middle East.

Shortly after Carney’s appearance in Toronto, the city with Canada’s largest Jewish community, The Gazette, a Montreal daily, published a story symptomatic of the times. It reported that Dr. Emmanuel Moss, the chief of cardiac surgery at the Jewish General Hospital, had resigned and planned to move to Atlanta, Georgia, in September. He ascribed his decision, in part, to rising antisemitism in Montreal.

While Moss declined to be interviewed or to explain his reasons for leaving Montreal, sources close to him told The Gazette that he and his family had “grown disillusioned with growing antisemitism in Montreal and what they viewed as a failure by authorities to crack down on incidents of Jew hatred – from physical assaults on Jews to vandalism of Jewish-owned businesses and the firebombing of synagogue entrances, as well as the firing of bullets at a yeshiva.”

According to the daily, Moss is the second high-profile Montreal Jew to leave the city following a sharp increase in documented antisemitic incidents in the past three years. Concordia University professor Gad Saad left Montreal to accept a position at the University of Mississippi.

In the wake of Carney’s speech, a man identified as Steven Luu tried to firebomb Temple........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)